Loss to Clippers rankles just a bit

Published 10:41 pm, Sunday, November 18, 2012

When the Spurs arrived at the Staples Center on the night of Nov. 7, they had no conception of the hornet's nest they were about to enter.

Given what had happened the last time they faced the Los Angeles Clippers in that building — the closeout game of last May's easy-does-it, second-round playoff sweep of the home team — the Spurs would have been wise to take better stock of their surroundings.

“They were all hyped for that game, because we swept them,” Spurs forward Stephen Jackson said. “They still had the dustpan in the arena.”

In a game that distilled to a matter of energy and want-to, the upstart Clippers emerged with a resounding 106-84 victory that remains the Spurs' most lopsided defeat of the season — and the only one to come at the hands of a Western Conference opponent.

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“They came out with a lot of energy, intense,” Spurs guard Danny Green said. “They wanted it more than us. You could tell they had a little chip on their shoulder.”

Revenge is rarely a motivating factor in November. That's especially true in San Antonio, where what happens in June is more important.

Still, when the Clippers return to the AT&T Center for tonight's rematch, flying high as one of the NBA's hottest teams, the Spurs are due a taste of what the upstarts from L.A. were feeling two weeks ago.

“We owe them,” Jackson said.

Strange as it sounds considering the Clippers' well-chronicled history as an NBA laughingstock, the Spurs view tonight's game as an early season measuring stick.

The Clippers' Nov. 7 rout of the Spurs ignited a five-game winning streak they will carry with them to San Antonio. Four of the Clippers' wins during that stretch have come by at least 13 points. The lone exception was a 107-100 triumph over the NBA champion Miami Heat.

Led by offseason addition Jamal Crawford, the NBA's top bench scorer at 20.7 points per game, Los Angeles is averaging 102.6 points per game, second only to Miami. The Clippers' average scoring margin (plus 9.34) leads the West.

At 7-2, the Clippers are off to their best start since 2005-06, when they came within one victory of the Western Conference finals.

“We'd be in really good shape now if it was a 10-game season,” said L.A. point guard Chris Paul, the Western Conference's assist leader at 10.2 per game. “We have to keep remembering it's a long season.”

A long memory served the Clippers well in their most recent engagement with the Spurs.

Afterward, many Clippers players admitted their unceremonious playoff ouster of six months earlier played a motivating role.

“I know that they played with a lot of energy, and we didn't guard very well,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “They pretty much scored at will. That was our big problem.”

Ask any Spurs player to recount what happened two weeks ago in Los Angeles, and the twin issues of energy and motivation are guaranteed to come up.

The Spurs had little of the former. The Clippers had plenty of the latter.

“They had the edge, we didn't,” said guard Manu Ginobili, who is coming off a season-high 20-point night in Saturday's 126-100 thumping of Denver. “They have a good team, and things started to roll their way, and they got inspired. We got down, and we were not as aggressive as them.”

Now it is time for the Spurs to turn the tables, and perhaps get inspired themselves.

Should they find themselves in need of a muse, game film from Nov. 7 ought to do the trick.

“Hopefully we can come out and match that energy and sustain it for 48 minutes,” Green said. “Good teams find a way to win. We'll find out how good we are.”